


It Runs in the Family

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: Songs of Heaven: Booker Dewitt + Elizabeth Comstock [7]
Category: BioShock Infinite, Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Burial at Sea, Character Death, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Rapture, Revenge, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-15
Updated: 2013-11-15
Packaged: 2018-01-01 14:43:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1045152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elizabeth visits Rapture and finds in herself a darkness too deep to name.  How does one live with the things they've done?</p><p>Written after Burial at Sea Part 1, but now that I've played Part 2, I rather prefer to stick with this idea of things!</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Runs in the Family

Elizabeth stared at herself in the mirror, her reflection wan and haggard.  For weeks now she had been debating what to do, opening tears here, tears there.  Reconnaissance.  She never stayed for long, always quickly returning to this small apartment here in Paris.  It had been an easy thing to rent; she had only to open a bank account a few decades back with some stolen francs, and then she returned to this time, with the money she needed for anything she could want.  But the little flat held no comfort for her.

She felt a sick mixture of emotions: rage, nausea, grief.  Her mind filled with the images of little dark-haired babies, their faces trusting and sweet even as their lives shattered in instants.  She had tried -- if only she could have reached out and stopped what happened -- 

But there were constants, and variables, and in that universe she could not pull the baby forward into Columbia, nor shove her back into Booker DeWitt's arms.  Nothing she said could change Comstock's mind; not logic clear and cold, not desperate pleas screamed into his ear.  Always it happened.

She had consulted with the Luteces.  Not the reflections that had opened a tear for Comstock, but the only true Luteces that remained, those that were trapped with her in the weird line between here and eternity.  Her mouth quirked in a bitter smile.  If it had never been for them she would never have become what she was.  But it was an inevitability of human social situations that you become friends with those like you.  They were the only ones who could really get a glimpse of what she saw, what she was.

They had agreed that Comstock, who had fled into that strange underwater city, needed to be removed.  Taken care of.  Euthanized.  There could not be any of them left to pollute the multiverse.  But remembering the way the tear had closed on that version of herself, Elizabeth could not find satisfaction in arranging an accident for him.  It would have so easy to open a tear into his office and pour arsenic into a bottle of absinthe.  He would never have been able to stop drinking it, even if he been sober enough to notice how bitter the taste was.  Her tears had shown her how intractable his alcoholism was.

They had also shown her a little girl, shy, large-eyed, thin.  She'd seen the way he begrudgingly gave her food, watched as he softened, brushing her hair at night, tucking her in with a battered dolly, even smiling sometimes when he watched her sleep.

She couldn't bear it.  The idea of happiness coming to that man --

She was relieved when he realized the girl was gone, when he raged through the casino, a mad dog let loose.  She watched his torture against people he thought had leads on the girl, and she settled into disdain.  But that was when her plan came to her.  He was feeling the pain of a father who had betrayed his daughter, and it was something he had no right to feel.  If she could make him feel the pain of the man he really was -- while bringing to light just how selfish it was of him to feel a father's loss -- then that might be enough to satisfy her.  

Robert and Rosalind had been against it, for her sake.  She had not even bothered trying to tell Booker, for she knew what he would say, what he had said before -- "Let me do it."  And besides, she had not wanted to disturb him.  She had not spoken to him since the river, though she had been unable to resist opening a tear to see him a few weeks ago.  Her brief looks told her that Anna was not sleeping well yet, that Booker was exhausted.  She also did not think that he remembered her, or Comstock, or Columbia... and she could not bear what it would feel like to find out. 

She brushed her hair.  She was not sure how fast she aged now that her powers were unharnessed.  Her hair had grown quickly after she had cut it during the escape of Columbia, though it had not grown at all while she was being tortured with the Siphon.  She suspected that her body no longer obeyed the laws of physics, following instead its own rules.  The idea was a little sad.  But her lustrous hair and the packet of dark hair dye might be enough to avoid Comstock recognizing her too early in her plan.

She finished tying the bow around her neck.  She had visited a few of Rapture's department stores before finding something she liked that would avoid arousing suspicion.  She still didn't know what to think of the makeup.  She looked so much older.  So much colder.

"It runs in the family," she said softly, reaching out and touching the mirror.  A tear slowly blossomed beneath her fingertips, to a dim corner on High Street, and Elizabeth stepped through.

****

It was all she could do to keep from vomiting.  

Booker - Comstock! - strode ahead of her, the way he moved so familiar.  His tall figure looked right at home in this miserable corner of Rapture.  Though he looked different, sicker, a little weaker, than the Booker she knew.  It was probably the exposure he had had to the tears, the Luteces explained.  Her face twisted to see the AD initials tattooed on his hand in blue, instead of carved and scarred in flesh.  He didn't deserve to feel the grief that inspired those letters, and yet, there they were.

She had known it would be difficult to be around another Booker DeWitt, even if this one was an imposter.  But when she remembered the man who chased the Songbird, screaming, to reach her, it was all she could do to try and mask her hatred when she looked in this man's green eyes.  They were glassy, glazed with a perpetual sheen of alcohol, but that was not unfamiliar to her.  It was perhaps too familiar.  The only thing she found strength in was that he did not know her.  When he said her name, there was no tenderness in his tone.  Not that there had been at first with the other Booker.  But by the end, even among all the terrible things that happened, his gruff voice was a comfort to her.

The man asked her a question.  "That depends, Mr. DeWitt," she said coolly.

"It's Booker," he said, almost plaintively.  She remembered a similar conversation in Columbia, but felt only disgust now.  Her eyes narrowed.

"Let's leave it at Mr. DeWitt."  There was no room for argument in her tone.  No matter what happened to this man, what he'd done, who he thought he was; in her mind, he would never, ever earn that name.

Still, the man did not guess what she was thinking.

****

She trembled, hearing Sally screaming, her heart still pounding from the onslaught of the Big Daddy.  She ran back to the vent to see Comstock frantically pulling the little girl as she shrieked.  Elizabeth fought back the sting of tears at the girl's terror.  Sally isn't human, she thought desperately.  She had done some research there on High Street, had heard the little girls could heal faster than they could be injured.  She knew this was temporary and yet the screaming... what was she doing?

"Let her go!  Let her go!" Elizabeth shouted, the girl's fear palpable.

But then the man was reeling, collapsing to the ground, blood streaming from his nose.  He reached out in supplication, and Elizabeth's rage ignited, unstoppable.

He gasped.  "I remember all of it. That poor child..."

Elizabeth snarled, "She wasn't yours, Comstock."  She spat the name out.  Filth.  "I wasn't.  Yet you had to have me, didn't you?  And when the guilt was too much --"  She was shaking, unable to finish her sentence.  Comstock staggered upward, blearily staring into the vent, where Sally had fallen quiet.  The familiar soothing voices of the Luteces finished for Elizabeth.

" - you turned to us to solve your problem."  Elizabeth barely heard what they said next.  Finally.  It was almost over now.

She gently took the doll's head from Comstock's hand, so alike to Booker's, and looked into those glassy green eyes.  There was no pity in her gaze.  She saw the hunched shape of the Big Daddy rising, twenty feet behind them.

"Elizabeth --" Comstock gasped.  "Child.  I am so sorry..."

"No, you're not," she said simply.  "But you're about to be."

She did not flinch as the blood spattered her face, as the drill turned, as the creature the Big Daddy had become ended something far more vile than itself.  Elizabeth stepped away from the body, watched as the Big Daddy retracted its drill and stared at her.  The red light coming from its face flickered back to yellow, and slowly it raised a fist and banged on the glowing vent.  Sally, sobbing, reached out her arms.  

"Mr. Bubbles," she cried.  "Please, Mr. Bubbles."  She was crying so hard she was having trouble speaking.  Elizabeth shuddered.  The little girl's arms and face were blistered red.  Gently the creature lifted her from the vent, and she went willingly, still weeping.  As Elizabeth watched, the blisters faded, the skin smoothing back to its waxen, sickly glow.  She let out a breath of relief, but the sound of the child's screams still echoed in her ears.  Even Comstock had been horrified to think they would turn the heat up on the child...

Sally brushed off her dress and sighed.  Those unearthly eyes looked past Elizabeth, seeing nothing.  But then she looked down at the floor and the ruined husk of Comstock lying there with its blood spilling.  She turned back to the monster.  "Mr. B, it's an angel.  Time to gather!" she said sweetly.  

The creature fumbled with something at its waist, its huge fingers surprisingly delicate and agile.  It held out a device that made Elizabeth feel nauseous, something like a baby bottle mixed with an impossibly long syringe needle  With delight the girl took it, and knelt at her former guardian's side.

"Angel, angel," she sang softly, then rammed the needle into Booker's -- Comstock's -- neck.  The flesh gave before it with a sickening sound, and red fluid, thicker than blood, spurted into the bottle.

Elizabeth fought to keep her gorge down.  Her mind swam, a buzz of thoughts and feelings too much to take.  She glanced around but saw the Luteces had left, their witness to her purge complete.  Time for her to do the same.

"Sally?" she said quietly.  The Big Daddy turned and stared at her, but did not move.  Sally pulled the needle out of the man she had once trusted, and glanced in Elizabeth's direction.

"Mr. B?" the girl said uncertainly.  Elizabeth held out the doll's head.

"It's Sarah, Sally," she said, and gently rolled the doll's head to rest at the little girl's feet, knowing instinctively not to approach the girl.  The girl bent down and picked it up, and for a second she stared at it in confusion, turning it over in her small hand and looking at its face.  She rubbed its hair with her thumb, stroking it. 

The look passed, and the girl dropped the toy, which rolled away.  With both hands Sally tilted her tool upwards, and brought her mouth to the bottle's nipple, drinking until she choked on the thick red fluid.  It shone on her lips and her chin as she suckled greedily.

Elizabeth opened a tear, and ran through it, leaving the girl's staring eyes behind.

****

Elizabeth lay awake in the little flat, staring at the ceiling.  Her face was scrubbed clean, her hair back in a simple plait.  She felt like a girl and an old woman all at once, weighed with the knowledge of the worlds beyond.  She had woken up in fear after another nightmare.

Sally's voice wended its way through her dreams, her yellow eyes glinting out of dark corners and holes in the walls.  She could not fall asleep without seeing the girl let her favorite toy drop to the ground to drink the blood and ADAM from Comstock's corpse.  Big Daddy footsteps vibrated in the background.

When she did manage to banish Sally's accusing, dead-eyed gaze, she remembered what she had done.  It was not the way Comstock's body crumpled before the drill, spurting blood, that stuck in her mind.  He had needed to die and she had no regrets there.

It was reviving him, keeping him alive to meet another death, that she remembered.  She recalled reaching a hand out to him, pumping him full of medical supplies, telling him to come back.  And it mixed with the panic she had felt all of those times with Booker DeWitt, until the two bled together, and she could not sort out which memories belonged to Booker DeWitt, which to a Comstock who had remade himself again.

What was she, that she could bring murderers back to life just to put them down like an animal?  What was she, that she could burn a girl -- or what was left of one -- to get at a man?  What was she, who could lie to a man for hours while leading him to his execution?  What was she, to leave a little girl to a life of being used like a thing?  She may not have been the one to hijack Sally's body to make her a slave to biology, but she was certainly the one who had abandoned her to a fate too much like Elizabeth's.  Memories of Monument Island, the scars on her back, washed over her.

"It runs in the family," she whispered to herself, and for a moment, she thought she might cry.  

But all she did was lay there, staring in the darkness, feeling colder than she ever had before.

****

For a time she opened no more tears.  She ate, drank, watched the sun set every night over the Seine.  It was a hollow time.  The Luteces came and went and she talked small things with them about the nature of time and the structure of the universe, and she felt nothing, nothing at all.  She sat in the apartment with the lights off and looked at the walls until she felt them closing about her like coffins' lids.  Cigarettes glowed in the darkness.  Her hair stank of them.

One day she dressed demurely in the clothes she had worn during the escape from Columbia.  She had had them repaired and cleaned, pressed and re-dyed.  She went to a hairdresser and had her hair cut in a neat bob, no ragged lines from bloody scissors this time.  Back in her flat she opened the wall and stepped through.

The apartment building was shabby, peeling wallpaper lining the walls of the hallway.  Elizabeth felt acutely out of place in her freshly repaired clothes.  She fidgeted at the bird brooch on her necklace, back where it belonged, and raised her hand to knock at a stained wooden door.

"Be right there," a man called.  The fussing of a baby could be heard, and Elizabeth suddenly felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of the hallway.  What was she doing here?  She wanted to run, but the door opened.

Booker DeWitt looked quizzically at her.  "Can I help you?" he asked, taking in her clean clothes against the grimy surroundings. The baby fussing quieted.

"I --" she started.  Her eyes stung, and she felt her cheeks reddening, emotion overcoming her.  Still the tears did not fall.  He didn't remember...  She had restored this Booker,  her Booker, to a second chance, and he did not remember.  She looked into his face, swallowing a lump in her throat.

Booker looked better, she noticed.  His complexion looked less ruddy, the bags beneath his eyes less swollen.  He was clean-shaven and his hair looked as if he might have actually had someone cut it instead of hacking it off himself.  And his eyes -- they were no longer glassy, but clear.  When he spoke again, there was nothing but the clean scent of tobacco, no heavy odor of stale whiskey or gin.

"Come inside," he said softly.  He beckoned inside, and she peered over his shoulder to see an apartment only mildly messy, strewn with the detritus of childcare instead of booking sheets and bottles.  

"Just for a moment," Elizabeth said stiffly, though she did not know what she hoped would happen.  She stepped inside and he closed the door, then suddenly staggered against the wall, burying his face in his hands.

"Booker!" she gasped, laying a hand on his forearm and pulling his hand away from his face.  It was his right hand.  There were no scars on the back of his hand, no letters.  She looked up into his face, and his nose was bleeding.  Hope flared within her, an emotion she had almost forgotten.

His eyes stared at something far beyond her for a moment, and then he blinked, looking down at her.  "Would -- would you help me sit down?" he gasped.  She led him to the closest chair, and he sat down, touching his hand to his nose, staring at the blood that his fingers came away with.

She sat down across from him, staring anxiously.  Would he remember everything?  Only snippets? She could take him to the lighthouses again, if she had to, though she did not know if she could bear to lead him once more through everything that had happened in Columbia.

He wiped the blood on his pants, breathing heavily.  "Elizabeth," he said, "Elizabeth."  His voice brought her back to being a shaking girl on an airship, a vengeful young woman in a laboratory.  

"What do you remember?" she whispered.

There was something shiny on Booker's cheeks, not blood.  It took her a moment to realize that it was tears streaking his face.  "Everything.  Columbia.  Comstock.  The river... What I did to -- to Anna.  To you."  He choked, then got to his feet, hurrying to the crib that stood in the corner of the room.  He lifted the child out of it, and she cooed, leaning her head on his shoulder.  He was breathing heavily through his mouth.  "But she's still here.  I'm so sorry, Anna, I'm so sorry," he said, cradling the baby.

Elizabeth stood.  She played nervously with the thimble on her missing finger, feeling left out and forgotten as she looked at the baby, another version of herself.

"Maybe I should go," she said, her voice cracking.  "I didn't mean to upset you.  I just -- I just wanted to know if you remembered.  It was selfish."

Booker kissed Anna on the forehead, and set her tenderly back in the crib, tucking her in with a blanket.  

"I think I remembered some of it before you came," he said slowly.  "At least the feeling behind it.  One morning I couldn't drink anymore.  I just had to take care of Anna.  Couldn't be doing the same things I did before.  But Elizabeth - don't go.  I'll not lose you again.  And I owe it to you to do things right this time.  I'm sorry.  For everything."

She looked at him.  Booker DeWitt, her father.  A man of many debts... and finally, finally, he was doing something to repay them.  He wasn't hiding, drowning in alcohol, scrabbling for a new name.  But she, what was she doing?  Murdering.  Abandoning.  Blinding herself with revenge.  He had moved to doing something better, something right, and she had taken up the DeWitt mantle of shame.  It was too heavy.

"Booker," she said, and she felt like crying again.  Before she could stop herself, though, the tears came in earnest, and she was standing in the middle of the room crying like a child.  Everything she'd seen, everything she'd done, it had finally caught up to her, and she could hardly move for how much a monster she felt.  "I've done... terrible things," she wept, but could not continue.

She felt his arms around her, warm, strong, pulling her close to let her rest her head against his chest, her tears flooding his shirt.  She clung to him as if he was all that stood between her and the darkness, and maybe it was true.  She realized how badly she had missed him, failures and all.

"Elizabeth," he whispered.  "It's all right, dear."  Instead of Comstock calling to a child not his own, she heard only Booker, his voice tender.  He stroked her hair, brushing it away from her face slicked with tears.  Haltingly, he pressed a kiss to her temple, the movement not as practiced as the kiss he had given Anna.  But it didn't matter.  She realized this Booker, her Booker, was going to try what he had failed at in so many universes.  He was going to be a father, and she was his daughter.

If shame connected the DeWitts, perhaps redemption did, too.  It runs in the family, she thought, and through her tears, she smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> dammit I still just want Booker and Elizabeth to be happy IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK, IS IT REALLY
> 
> but fuck yeah Booker and Elizabeth hugs for real


End file.
